How We Helped Smartdreamers Increase Their Qualified Leads Rate by 80% – [Case Study]

Audits and Strategy Ideation For Improving Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate

Let’s dive in 6 elements that made for our first and second stage: audit and strategy ideation.

• SEO with Lead Generation in mind

Even though the Smartdreamers team was SEO-savvy, there is always some room for improvement.
The audit quickly revealed first insights:

- Some of the pages had a potential to drive quality traffic but needed some further optimisation

- Some on-page SEO elements were missing that allow the sites to rank higher, like alt attributes

We made a list of quick fixes as well as detailed long-term optimization plans. Take a sneak peak of their outcomes report below:

• Content Marketing

We took the initial SEO audit further to content marketing and decided that we should focus on creating outstanding content that brings more value to the readers.

It turned out that Smartdreamers should focus on publishing fewer articles, but making them of exceptional quality; starting from much more substantial size to including rich media and examples.

We also made suggestions for every relevant blog article on how to make SEO-wise improvements (meta descriptions, titles, suggestions for merging/rewriting/deleting).

Google ads

We deep-dived into the campaigns. The Smartdreamers team was delighted that just by looking at the setup, it’s possible to identify quick fixes that will already improve the overall performance. We also identified optimizing possibilities in terms of targeting (keywords, placements, audiences, exclusions), bids and conversions.

The key stage was looking at the ads and landing pages copy, where we identified opportunities for the most important change: quality score improvement.

Based on keyword and competition research we defined 7 topic clusters that could be approached via search ads and dedicated landing pages.

Google Tag Manager & Analytics

We are true believers in data-driven decisions. It was only logical that after SEO, content marketing strategy and ads audits, we performed an audit for absolute essentials: conversion and traffic tracking.

We analyzed:

-Scripts setup-Scripts configurations-Data integrity-Conversion setupBased on the findings we suggested a detailed fixing plan so we can measure and leverage the data to our favor.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Having decided to go in-depth, we analyzed the whole website and specific elements, page by page:

-Traffic data

-Pages goals & CTAs

-Pages copy

-Social proof on pages

-Design

-Blog listing and blog articles structure

-Forms

We figured out the end-goal for each page and established if the copy, design and other elements are fulfilling that goal.

We also pointed out small fixes to work on: improving the navigability and visitor funnel across multiple devices.

Conversational marketing audit

Did we mention Smartdreamers were not new to the marketing game? They were also aware of the power of chatbots and how they can be an amazing CRO tool.

They already used Intercom for their conversational marketing, but we decided to go level up.

We analyzed their conversation scenarios and we provided other chatbot designs:

-ABM bots

-Direct traffic visitors

-Returning visitors

-Google ads traffic bot for users coming from Romania (accruing 17% of the traffic for one of the existing lead magnet campaigns)

-Post outreach bot

-Customer pages bots

B2B Audit and Strategy Ideation: First Results

We were very pleased by the first outcomes. It seemed we were missing these little elements that now started to paint a full picture of what was lacking from our marketing and sales strategy – says Ovidiu.

It’s important to note that first, we focused on small changes, like moving the chatbot from left to right, fixing the alt and meta description attributes, or tweaking the Google Search campaign.

Then, we agreed that there were bigger changes that had to happen in the company. With the help of MAN Digital, we realized our marketing and sales should be centred around education and clarity. Only this approach will guarantee us a structured way of managing projects, prioritizing tasks to reach specific goals, and being able to have a framework and scale the process.

Smartdreamers realized there was room for improvements, but did not anticipate such impressive growth opportunities. It also became clear that it was time to make a decision about the hardest part – implementation.

Increasing Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate: Long-term Strategy and Instant Results

We didn’t waste any time and decided to focus on the low-hanging fruits - trying to bring in leads fast, while in the background, we were defining a long-term approach.

While we were having our calls and brainstorming sessions, the Smartdreamers Product Marketing Manager, Ovidiu, came up with a brilliant idea of creating The Employer Branding Playbook:

When our approach towards marketing and sales shifted towards clarity and education, we just had to showcase it. That’s why we created The Employer Branding Playbook. It was not created just 'for the sake of it', to have a lead magnet. We wanted to provide theory with actionable templates, an actual action plan to prospective customers.

How did that work?

• Landing page
• 6 questions that the readers were invited to answer
• Personalized employer branding action plan based on the answers

We started the promotion with LinkedIn campaigns:

We used Hubspot for campaign management (contact tracking, automation…)

From a time perspective, we can gladly confirm that these low-hanging fruits landed as leads that ended up in the sales pipeline.

Content strategy and future campaigns

We focused on creating a long-term content strategy. Our goal was to understand the buyer persona better, but also the struggles in the sales team, and how sales conversations were happening.

For this reason, we interviewed the sales and customer success team. The insights we got were priceless and helped us understand the business and the opportunities.

As a result, we designed a content strategy to target specific verticals and company sizes. Outlined pieces of content directly related to the personas’ pains and would serve as sales enablement materials.

Main directions for the content strategy? Carefully specified and very straight-to-the-point:

• Product features - in the format of video FAQs
• An employer branding cluster (there was a lot of content behind to be recycled, merged and improved)
• A talent acquisition cluster - which needed a new lead magnet

The first blog article in the employer branding series was created with our help to set a high-quality benchmark.

The Smartdreamers team quickly picked it up and apart from regular publishing on the blog, they started to work on the Buyer’s Guide ebook.

Currently, they plan to re-edit the ebook to adjust it to post-COVID times before publishing and promoting it. They also continue to update their website. Since we finished forming the long-term strategy, the number of qualified leads grew by 80%.

Activities wrap-up

The work of designing lead generation and content strategy looked like this:

Audit:

• Google Tag Manager & Analytics
• Google Ads
• SEO
• Content strategy
• Conversational marketing
• CRO
• Competition analysis

Content:

• Content Strategy
• 1 blog article delivered

Lead Generation:

• Landing pages
• New ebook copy
• LinkedIn ads campaigns
• Email follow-ups
  

Conversion:

• Chatbot strategy
• Business case consulting

What was supposed to be an audit ended with a fruitful cooperation:

We are sure that Smartdreamers’ journey as a fully marketing-savvy company has just begun.

To see what #1 business application for Recruitment Marketing Automation looks like, visit Smartdreamers.